Homebrew Setting Clans: Faninites

This guide is part of a larger series in which I delve into the clan identities of the groups in my homebrew setting. This accomplishes a couple of important things--partially, it allows me to have a number of important families and organizations in my world to refer to; it also gives me the opportunity to think more in detail about the way my cultural groups work; and third, as I saw in the entry for the Daltoners, my setting's other group of humans, it lets me add some variation to the group. Before I created my entry for the Daltoners, I treated them as a uniformly evil and colonial group of people who embrace racism and misogyny, so every time a Daltoner appeared in a campaign, they adhered to this group of unsavory traits. But as I wrote the guide to their clans, I started to recognize that the group is not homogeneous and created a few clans that departed from the evil stereotype I'd had in my head. Think about that--an entire eighth of my homebrew setting was a vague archetype that kept all encounters with them very similar, but writing about their clans allowed me to vary and differentiate them in ways that will enrich my DMing. Similarly, I'm setting out to find out the depths of my other groups of humans, the Faninites, who I've always treated as natural-loving, peaceful folks akin to Vikings, but more calm and gentle. So let's see what groups are the foremost among the Faninites. 

Homebrew Setting Clans: Daltoners

I've recently begun writing a novel based on a D&D campaign I was lucky enough to take part in over the last few years, and doing so has involved revisiting the worldbuilding of the DM who ran the campaign. One very rich element of his setting is that most civilizations, particularly the elves and orcs who were featured in the campaign, are very detailed in terms of leadership and clans. In the process of writing the (as of this article's writing) most recent chapter, I got to really dig into the orcish clans, their leaders, and how they are all specialized. It inspired me--I realized that despite the years of development I've put into my world, I've never really gotten into the specifics of how people organize themselves into factions. That seems like a sad oversight now, and so this will be the first in an eight-part series of guides to the major clans of each cultural group. Let us begin with one of my human groups: the Daltoners, sun-worshiping extremists who have always aimed to colonize Evanoch and spread their way of life. 

In this series of guides, the general organization will explain the overall role of the clans in the profile as well as the clans themselves--who runs them, their history, and how they function in the world. These will be partially constructed in order to give more life and detail to my world, but as always, the more important aim is to provide the world with jumping-off points. What I mean is this: should a group of Daltoners appear in a game I'm running, I'll have a reference point to do something detailed in the moment without having to improvise entire structures on the spot. Let's imagine that I'm DMing, and a group of Daltoners becomes a part of the story. Before this clan guide, I would be forced to generalize about the worldviews of Daltoners at large. But with this clan guide, I'll have a more rich and varied take on what makes Daltoners a broader but also diverse group, and I'll have this more detailed information to improvise based on in the moment, freeing me up to make stronger and more specific stories based on a foundation. This is, to me, the point of worldbuilding--to provide a framework for improvisation with details that can inspire further details as they impact the story. So without further ado, let's get started.